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Holding business video-based meetings and work conversations online enables you to chat face-to-face while helping to reduce your company's travel expenses. The Chat feature in Gmail works like an instant messaging system, enabling you to type back and forth with your contacts. Installing Google's free Hangouts plugin broadens the scope of GChat, enabling you to hold video chats with up to nine people simultaneously.

1.

Download the free Hangouts plugin for Google Chat (link in Resources). When the download is complete, close all of the open Web browser windows on your computer, and then click the downloaded plugin file to install it.

2.

Open your Web browser and sign in to your Gmail account.

3.

Hover your mouse pointer over the first contact with whom you want to hold a video chat. Potential chat partners are listed on the Chat list on the left side of the main Gmail window. Contacts with video chat capabilities have camera icons located next to their names.

4.

Click the "Hangouts" icon that appears when you hover your mouse pointer over the contact. The hangouts icon resembles a speech bubble with a video camera superimposed over the top of it.

5.

Wait for the first contact to accept your chat request, and then hover your mouse pointer over the second person with whom you want to hold a video chat. Click the "Hangouts" icon to add them to your conversation.

Tips

When you click the Hangouts icon, Google sends a chat request to the contact. The contact must click the provided "Join Hangout" link in order to join your video chat.

Users must have a Google+ account in order to take part in a multi-person video chat. They must also download and install the Hangouts plugin.

Resources (1)

About the Author

Andrew Tennyson has been writing about culture, technology, health and a variety of other subjects since 2003. He has been published in The Gazette, DTR and ZCom. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in history and a Master of Fine Arts in writing.

Photo Credits

Joe Raedle/Getty Images News/Getty Images

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Tennyson, Andrew. "Can You Three Way Video on GChat?" Small Business - Chron.com, http://smallbusiness.chron.com/can-three-way-video-gchat-73891.html. Accessed 14 September 2019.

Tennyson, Andrew. (n.d.). Can You Three Way Video on GChat? Small Business - Chron.com. Retrieved from http://smallbusiness.chron.com/can-three-way-video-gchat-73891.html

Tennyson, Andrew. "Can You Three Way Video on GChat?" accessed September 14, 2019. http://smallbusiness.chron.com/can-three-way-video-gchat-73891.html

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